


woven

by sunbrights



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Birthday Fluff, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 16:19:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11361075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbrights/pseuds/sunbrights
Summary: On the thirtieth of June, she is thirteen, and her hair is past her collarbone.





	woven

The autumn after her tenth birthday, Miss Natsumi reads on the internet that her hair will curl if she leaves it in braids overnight. She points the page out to Peko while the young master is in the bathroom, and tugs her down to sit on the floor behind her.

“Split it down the middle,” she says. “I want a braid on both sides.”

Peko does as she’s told. She draws her fingers carefully down the back of Miss Natsumi’s head, and parts her hair down the middle, as evenly as she can manage. She knows in theory what to do, and even if her fingers are clumsy at first, she finds the pattern easily enough. Over, around, and through.

(Peko’s hair is short, cut high by her ears. It’s longer on the left side than on the right, though not by much; she can only tell the difference when it’s wet, if she tugs on both sides at the same time. It’s nothing at all like Miss Natsumi’s, long and thick and healthy, but it is what suits her role.)

The young master comes back, with his head half-tilted into a towel. (He must have water in his ears.) He announces himself by rattling the edge of the shōji with his foot.

“Cut it out, Natsumi,” he complains. “It’s not her job to be your stylist.”

He is newly twelve, and has cycled through three personal barbers in as many months. It’s taken him a year to decide on a style (cropped close against his skull, with parallel curves shaved into the sides), but he’s yet to find anyone who can replicate it to his liking. He’s been compensating with hair gel, lately, but that requires he wash it out every night.

He scrubs the towel over his head. It makes his hair stick out in all directions, caught up by static. Peko thinks it looks softer, without the gel in it.

(She does not say so.)

“So what?” Miss Natsumi twists her head to the side. It pulls her left braid straight out of Peko’s fingers. “You’re not using her for anything. Why shouldn’t I be able to get my hair done?”

“Please hold still, Miss Natsumi,” Peko says.

“Because she already has a job, dumbass.” He lowers his voice on the final word. The cursing is relatively new. Peko thinks he isn’t quite as eager to do it where his mother might overhear. “And I don’t _use her_ for anything.”

“I _know._ It’s like, what’s even the point?”

“Shut up.” Peko feels him look at her. He’s going to address her directly now; she lays Miss Natsumi’s braids against her back and sits up at attention. “You don’t have to put up with this, Peko,” he says. “You can go.”

Miss Natsumi cranes her neck to glare at him over her shoulder. Peko has only been able to finish half of one braid; disappointment settles in her stomach at the idea of leaving them both incomplete.

She chooses her words carefully. “Would you like me to leave, young master?”

He bows his head to scrub at his ears with the towel again. She isn’t sure why; he must have gotten the water out already. “That’s not what I said.”

“Then… may I stay and finish Miss Natsumi’s braids?”

He stares at her. She tries not to waver under it, but it’s a foolish and unnecessary request; he’s well within his rights to deny her.

“I don’t care,” he says finally. “Do whatever you want.” 

She wants to thank him, but Miss Natsumi crows, “That’s right!” before she can. He rolls his eyes, and slides the shōji shut behind him. “Now sit down and shut up! You don’t know anything about anything.”

“Please hold still, Miss Natsumi,” Peko says.

The young master sits cross-legged beside her, and changes the channel on the television.

*

Her teacher trims her hair on the thirtieth of every month, to keep it neat. It grows too fast in the back, he says; if it isn’t carefully managed, a stray breeze could be the difference between her and death.

She doesn’t mind it so much, anymore. It keeps her neck cool in the summer, even when her training sessions stretch late into the afternoon, and it’s worthwhile for her to eliminate as many variables as she possibly can.

When it’s time, she kneels on the tile in the bathroom with her head tipped forward, over the drain. The clippers buzz to life in his hand behind her. The ones he uses for her are older, since the ones used for the hounds were replaced.

He sets his palm against the back of her skull and says, “Hold still.”

It doesn’t take long. There isn’t much to cut. She watches a few wings of pale hair flutter onto the tile in front of her, and when he’s finished, he brushes the rest off of her shoulders. He tests the cut the way he always does, by grasping at the back of her skull. She leans forward, and slips out of his grip.

“Good,” he says. “Back to your duties.”

The next time she sees the young master, he’s finishing his homework for the afternoon. She steps into the room to keep watch while he works, and his eyes hang on the back of her head.

“Did you cut your hair?” he asks.

“Yes,” she answers. “It’s cut every month.”

“Oh.” 

He lapses back into silence, but every so often she’ll see him raise his eyes again, in her peripheral vision. She resists the urge to touch the ends of her hair. The clippers will leave it uneven in the back, sometimes.

He wants to say something, but doesn’t. It’s something he does on occasion, but only with her, and usually only when they’re alone. (She’s learned not to let it sting. One shouldn’t be expected to readily confide in a tool.) It’s rare that he opts not to say anything at all, though, so Peko doesn’t interrupt him. She waits, eyes steady on the door.

“Have you thought about growing it out?” he decides, after five more minutes of consideration. “Y’know, like Natsumi did.”

It’s not the direction of conversation she was expecting. The only response she can come up with is: “... Why?”

He flushes. “I dunno! That’s what girls do, isn’t it?” She doesn’t have enough experience to know, so she doesn’t answer. “Do you even like having it that short?”

“Keeping my hair this length is practical,” she says. Her teacher reminds her each time he cuts it, and she can recite his explanation word-for-word. “It ensures visibility no matter the circumstances, and makes it more difficult for an enemy to grab me from behind.”

The young master leans forward on his elbows. “Right,” he says. “But do you _like_ it?”

He’s earnest with the question. She doesn’t want to disappoint him. But when she opens her mouth, she finds she doesn’t have an answer.

“If you didn’t have to do all that other stuff,” he presses, “would you keep it like that?”

Phrased like that, the answer finds her easily. “That’s irrelevant,” she says.

It’s the wrong answer, somehow. His expression turns sour. “No, it’s not.”

“It is.” She tries to find another way to word it that will ease his misgivings, whatever they are. “I will always act in this role for you, young master,” she says. “Given the choice, I would still choose to serve you. So precautions will always need to be taken.”

It’s still wrong. She doesn’t know how, but it is. He scowls down at his work in front of him, and disengages from her completely. “Whatever,” he says, shoulders drawn up to his ears. “I don’t care. Forget I asked.”

She tries.

*

The next month, the young master has a meeting with a contingent of new junior members. Many of them are six to ten years his senior, and many are vocally disappointed to be meeting with him, and not the kumichō himself. 

He handles himself admirably. Peko only has to step in once, to pluck a knife from the waistband of one of the more dishonorable prospects and remove him from the premises. The rest fall in line, but not because of her; the young master finds his voice, and commands the room.

It is not the beginning of his instruction, but it is an important milestone. Peko sits with him in the hours afterward, mostly silent, while he pages through schedules and paperwork and introductions. He’s quiet and focused, but she reads stress in the line of his shoulders, and the restless scrub of his hands over his head. (He used the gel in his hair this morning.)

Late in the afternoon, the shōji slides open. Mitsuya-san steps inside, head bowed, and it’s only then that Peko remembers the day, and that she’s missed the scheduled time to have her hair trimmed.

“Forgive the intrusion, young master,” Mitsuya-san says. “I’m only here to fetch Pekoyama-san.” She beckons with one hand, but Peko is already climbing to her feet.

The young master lifts his head and says, “No.”

Mitsuya-san meets Peko’s eye across the room, where she’s already half stood up from the floor. Her expression is unreadable. “Young master?”

“She’s not going,” he says. “You need me to say it again?”

“Of course not.” Mitsuya-san’s smile is polite, but resilient. The young master barely even looks. “I understand. I apologize for the disturbance.”

She backs out of the room, and slides the shōji closed behind her. Peko watches her shadow recede, and then hovers where she is. She has the impression the young master would like her to stay, but her teacher will be displeased if she arrives to training in the morning with her hair messy.

“Sit down, Peko,” the young master says, and that makes the decision for her. She obeys, sinking back to her knees.

He doesn’t look at her, and he doesn’t say anything else. 

“Young master—”

“If you want to cut it, cut it,” he tells her, without looking up. “If you don’t, don’t. That’s it.” He flips a page over, the edges scraping noisily against the table. “I’m sick of those guys acting like they call the shots about it.”

She’s more confused now than she had been already. But he’s on-edge enough, and still refuses to look at her, so she says, “I understand,” and leaves it at that.

She resolves to cut it herself when she has the opportunity.

*

She doesn’t cut it. 

Time and opportunities get away from her, and eventually her hair gets long enough to tickle the edges of her earlobes. It should be frustrating, but then she catches herself smoothing her hands over it, or letting her fingers twist in the ends. She can’t bring herself to trim it, even when Mitsuya-san lends her the kitchen scissors. 

The thirtieth comes and goes.

*

By spring, her hair is at her shoulders, and too long. She isn’t used to the weight on her neck; it’s hot, even in March.

One of the new girls on the kitchen staff teaches her how to twist it into a high knot at the top of her head. She kneels at the edge of Peko’s futon after lights-out, and ties it off with one of her own hair bands. “To keep it off your neck,” she says. She picks nervously at her sleeves. “Is that better?” 

“Yes,” Peko says. “Much.” She cups her hands around the back of her scalp, and marvels at the feeling. “... Thank you.”

The girl’s name is Aoyama Mei. The other servants will give Peko a wide berth more often than otherwise, but after that first night Aoyama begins laying her futon out next to Peko’s in the evening.

Aoyama keeps a collection of pins and combs and ribbons in a box at the head of her futon, and wears a new one in her hair each day. They’re colorful, and many are shaped like animals or flowers. She uses them to show Peko different ways to style her hair, sometimes: half up, or pinned to one side, or clipped around the base of her neck.

“Do you want to keep that one?” Aoyama offers, when Peko unpins a barrette shaped like a rabbit from her hair, and lingers a moment too long. “It’s okay. I have a lot.”

Peko draws her thumb over the metal edge of the rabbit’s ear. She sets the pin back in the box. There is a line between a flight of fancy and reality.

“No,” she says. “Thank you.”

*

Her teacher disapproves, but the young master’s wishes take precedence over his recommendations. Peko practices tying her hair back, and finds that if she ties it into a tight enough bun, she only has to compensate for a wisp tickling her forehead here and there.

It’s foolish.

Early in May, halfway through her final spar of the afternoon, the hair band snaps. Momentum spills every strand forward, into her face, where it sticks in the sweat on her cheeks and forehead. Her rhythm breaks. She can’t see. She swipes at her forehead with the back of her off-hand, but by then it’s already too late.

Her teacher pivots around her, and catches her by the back of the head, his fingers twisting painful knots into her hair. He jerks her head back, dragging her off her feet, and then the blunt edge of his weapon is against her throat.

Dead, in three moves.

“Cut it,” he tells her. She stumbles when he lets her go. “Unless you want it to kill the young master, too.”

*

That night, she ties her hair into a ponytail at the base of her neck. She kneels on the tile in the bathroom with her head tipped over the drain, and fits the teeth of Mitsuya-san’s kitchen scissors above the band. 

It has been a foolish stint of vanity. It’s lasted long enough. There will always be risk against the young master’s life, but no part of it should come from her. She let her own childishness get in the way of that single, unbreakable rule.

Cutting it is practical.

Cutting it is responsible.

Cutting it is her duty.

It is _only hair._

Her fingers tremble. The clatter of the scissors on the tile rings in her ears long after she’s dropped them.

*

Miss Natsumi hasn’t plaited her hair before bed in months (citing headaches and, in her own words, that “whoever writes that garbage on the internet needs to learn that _waves_ aren’t _curls_ ”), but Peko’s fingers still remember the rhythm. 

She's up early the next morning. Earlier than her normal schedule, earlier than the sunrise, and even earlier than Aoyama and the rest of the kitchen staff. Shame and sleep deprivation lead her to the belief that she can come up with a solution better than the obvious, proper one, and she steals into the bathroom while the rest of the girls are sleeping.

She splits her hair down the middle, and ties each section high on the back of her head. She separates each of those into three, and then weaves them together. Over, around, and through. Over, around, and through.

The end result is nothing at all like Miss Natsumi’s smooth, shiny plaits. The sections are uneven, and Peko’s hair is still too short for them to do anything but stick out from either side of her head, but it is what suits her role. They are small targets, and secured twice: once at the top and once at the bottom.

The mirror is cloudy with water spots, from dozens of girls brushing their teeth and washing their faces. Peko wipes her sleeve across the glass, over the reflection of her hair, tucked behind her ear.

It isn’t enough. Any compromise she makes by definition compromises the young master as well. She has a duty, and instead she is here, playing with her hair in the mirror like a little girl.

It is unacceptable, in any configuration.

*

She doesn’t interrupt his morning routine, or his breakfast with his family. She isn’t important enough to throw off the normal schedule of his day. It’s later in the afternoon, when they’re alone, that she bows herself low against the floor, forehead pressed to the straw of the mat.

“Young master,” she says, “I owe you an apology.”

He isn’t expecting it. He’s flustered, even though it’s been months that she’s been transgressing against him. “Hey,” he says. “C’mon, what’re you— don’t do that.” She does not lift her head. “What’re you talking about?”

She has spent the entire morning crafting the language of her apology. “Fukumoto-sensei has advised repeatedly that I keep a regular schedule when cutting my hair, in order to ensure both my safety and yours on the battlefield. I have not done so." She waits, but he doesn’t interrupt. His silence is like a key in a lock, twisting her chest painfully tight. “There is no excuse for my behavior. I have allowed my own selfishness to come before your safety, and in doing so have abandoned my duties.”

“Peko,” he says. “Come on. Nothing _happened._ ”

“Not yet,” she counters. “Fukumoto-sensei demonstrated the risks to me. It was reckless of me to not acknowledge them sooner.” It’s perhaps her worst admission: she knew the implications of what she was doing, and chose to ignore them. “I am your tool. If I cannot reliably fulfill that responsibility, there is no purpose to my existence.”

“Alright,” he says, and there’s a weight to his voice that’s become more familiar, lately. “First of all, fuck that guy.” He’s lost most of his trepidation about the cursing in the last several months. His mother frequently reprimands him at the dinner table. “Second of all, are you really going to let some hair stop you?”

Her eyelashes catch on the fibers of the tatami when she opens her eyes. “Young master?”

“I trust you,” he tells her, and it’s so plain that it makes her breath stick in her throat. “Not because you’re some _tool._ Because you’re a person, and you know how to learn to be _better_ than shit like this.” Her chest burns with the urge to lift her head and see his face, but she doesn’t. She can’t. “I’d pick you over Fukumoto every time. Hair or no hair. Understand?”

She cannot say yes, so she doesn’t say anything.

“Cut it off if you feel like you have to,” he says eventually. He sets both hands on his knees, and sighs when he pushes himself up to standing. “I don’t think you have to. That’s all I’m saying.”

Her throat hurts. She breathes herself steady, and by then she understands enough to say: “Thank you, young master.”

“Quit calling me that,” he says. “Now will you get up already?”

She picks her head up off the floor.

*

On the thirtieth of June, she is thirteen, and her hair is past her collarbone. It’s long enough now that the braids droop almost to her shoulders, even when she wears them high on her head. 

She’s learned how to accommodate the extra weight. She is still practicing at making them an extension of herself, to ensure she is always aware of their position, the same way she treats her sword bag and the ties on her clothes and the far tip of her weapon.

The moment she feels it is a barrier she cannot surpass, she will cut them. To date, that moment has not come.

In the meantime, she enjoys the morning routine, weaving the strands together. Over, around, and through.

She is only finished with the one braid that morning, when the servants’ quarters suddenly light up with noise. The other girls had been crowding the door, and now they’ve abruptly scattered, with a burst of giggles and frenzied whispers.

When she turns, the young master is in the doorway, and headed straight for her. The girls scurry out of his way, dipping into shallow bows and murmurs of, “Good morning, young master.”

“Hey,” he says. He’s a little breathless, even though the servants’ quarters are just on the other side of the grounds. He avoids her gaze, and then ends up staring at her unfinished right braid. “Sorry. I, uh. I didn’t want to miss you.”

“Is something the matter, young master?”

“Don’t call me that.” He’s avoiding the question on purpose, but there are a few maids huddled by the door who are watching them curiously. Peko only nods. “I can’t stay long. Mom’ll flip out if I’m late for breakfast again.” He produces a thin, grey box from his pocket, and presses it into her palm. “Hang onto this for me, wouldja?”

He looks at her then, eyebrows high and expression meaningful. It isn’t particularly subtle. He does this every year, even though she wishes he wouldn’t.

“Yes, young master,” she says.

He lets out a short, frustrated sigh. “Would you just— Nevermind.” He draws the knot of his tie back up to his collar. “I’ll see you.”

The maids sweep apart to let him out, and then converge back together in a wave when the door shuts behind him. None of them are brave enough to confront her directly, but one or two crane their necks to try and peer over her shoulder from a distance. Peko turns her back on them.

In the box are hair ribbons, made of gleaming black silk. There is delicate needlework at the edges, and a subtle pattern of roses if she turns them the right way in the light. 

They’re simple, but beautiful. Too much so, for someone like her.

She sets the box aside. When she’s finished with her second braid, she unfurls the plain, white ribbons she normally ties her hair with out into her palm. There isn’t anything wrong with them. They’re effective, while still allowing her some measure of decoration. It’s a good, practical choice.

When it’s time to tie them, though, her hands hesitate. She sets the ribbons back in her lap. She reaches again for the young master’s box.

The silk is cool on her fingertips, even in the summer.


End file.
